Colonel Ellard – who’d drilled me hard as a new recruit – had been fond of reminding me that the enemy has a vote. ‘He won’t do what you expect him to just because you want him to.’ That was day two of training and a lifetime ago. But Ellard would have agreed there was no point figuring out what this target’s plan was. He’d made a choice, and he was going to have to live with it, however briefly. The fact that he’d chosen to come here, now, was the only certainty, the only fact to consider. I assumed he was armed, and that the doors might be rigged. But only one of us was going to leave the cottage, and on the current balance of probabilities that was going to be me. ‘Surprise,’ concluded the colonel, ‘neutralizes ignorance. Briefly.’

But Ellard didn’t send me on jobs. Commander Frank Knight did. And Frank had been clear about two things: the kill had to be verified and the cottage had to be swept. I didn’t know what, exactly, I was looking for. And neither, I suspected, did Frank.

This was a rare target of opportunity – the sort I hardly ever dealt with. No prep, no briefing, no one in Whitehall pretending they couldn’t remember my name – just another bloody love letter from Frank to his dagger man. Maybe it was personal. Maybe I should have asked. But questions had got me into a lot of trouble in the past. For better or worse, if I was in it again, I was in it for good.

No ifs. No buts. No questions.

Zero six thirty.

Dirt fouled my black kit; my face filthy with bog grime. I left the balaclava rolled in my pocket. There was only a dead man to see me, after all. The inside edges of the tiny window frames, which in an hour would glow gold with lamplight, were still solid black: ancient beams as tough as prison bars. I could no more get in through them than he could get out of them.

I press-checked the SIG – a silenced .45. Ten rounds in the magazine and one up the spout. I’d chosen custom-made semi-wadcutters: thick lead rounds with a flat nose and no jacket, hand-loaded into spent brass picked up in Derry twenty years ago. Whoever got the blame for this would already be enjoying his Good Friday amnesty.

Zero seven hundred.

The sky lightened over the limestone ridges that cut between the cottage and the village at Cashel Glebe. People would be stirring: children dressing for school; farmers already at their herds. The glare of car headlights flickered on the low cloud over the lough.